Highlights
C&EN: Metal complexes rip open benzene
17 July 2025Scandium and chromium compounds team up to convert iconic molecule into linear product at room temperature.
C&EN: Crystals defy their symmetry to discern chiral light
24 June 2025Centrosymmetric crystals have always absorbed equal amounts of left- and right-handed circularly polarized light—until now.
C&EN: Magnetic stirrers linked to issues with reproducing chemistry results
17 June 2025From the lab that found impurities on your stir bar—your flask’s placement on a stirrer plate can mess with your reaction too.
C&EN: ‘Perplexanes’ achieve mind-bending molecular topology
10 June 2025Zirconium helps to weave entangled nanocarbon cages in high yields.
C&EN: Atom-thin iodine film makes its debut
29 May 2025Iodinene is the first halogen analog of graphene and is expected to be unusually metallic.
TESTIMONIALS
“As an editor and reporter, Mark Peplow is fast, accurate, and versatile. He covers science policy and pure research with equal passion, and his writing combines a scientist’s precision with a journalist’s verve.” Tim Appenzeller
Former Chief Magazine Editor at Nature, now News Editor at Science
"Mark guided me through some of the most challenging stories I've written. These are pieces I might not have attempted were it not for his steady editorial hand." Linda Nordling
Freelance Journalist, South Africa
“Working with Mark is never anything other than a pleasure. He is the kind of editor that writers hope for: able to identify what needs fixing and what doesn’t, bringing to bear a wealth of knowledge, always clear, prompt and easy to talk with. Much of that comes from being a splendid writer himself.”
Philip Ball
Freelance Science Writer
Author Archives: Mark Peplow
Nature Reviews Drug Discovery: Cryo-electron microscopy makes waves in pharma labs
Companies hope the Nobel Prize-winning imaging methodology will reveal biomolecule characteristics that can guide drug discovery projects.
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Chemical & Engineering News: Beetles get by with a little help from their friends
Symbiotic bacteria with stripped-down genomes break up plant cell walls for their hosts.
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Chemistry World: The diversity challenge
Science is becoming more inclusive, but gaps remain.
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Chemical & Engineering News: Titanium nitride probe records more neurons than ever before
Neuropixels device can simultaneously record signals from hundreds of nerve cells.
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Chemistry World: Flare paths
The US government must stop trying to roll back regulations that curb gas flaring.
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Nature: Explosive moments in the laboratory
Mark Peplow surveys a gorgeous gala of reactions in Theodore Gray’s new book.
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Nature: How fracking is upending the chemical industry
As shale-gas compounds flood the market, chemists are working out the best ways to convert them into the ingredients of modern life.
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Chemistry World: Harvey’s hard lessons
The chemical fires triggered by extreme flooding in Houston demonstrate the need to improve risk management.
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Chemistry World: Isotopes and islands
The UK has a solution to the potential shortage of technetium-99m – but that’s no reason to be complacent about leaving Euratom.
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Chemistry World: The dark side of dichloromethane
Policymakers and industry must take steps to curb emissions of popular solvent.
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